Maintaining up-to-date information in stable databases is of the utmost importance to many different companies. Banks, brokerage firms, airlines, and auction houses are examples of companies that depend on databases to produce accurate information without fail. Downtime for a database owned by one of these companies translates directly into lost revenue.
Accordingly, many companies have adopted elaborate and expensive procedures for maintaining their databases. Database maintenance almost always requires the hiring of a team of trained database administrators to perform intelligent monitoring and management of the database facilities owned by their employer. For the kinds of companies mentioned above, an experienced team of database administrators is absolutely necessary.
Traditionally, database monitoring and management has been confined to hard-wired environments where database administrators must be physically present and available at all times to perform routine maintenance and fix problems. Keeping a team of database administrators working twenty-four hours a day, everyday, simply to fix a problem that might occur is too costly for smaller companies and inefficient for all companies. If it were possible for a database administrator to monitor and manage his or her company's databases remotely, for example, from home or while on vacation, the costs of maintaining the databases might be considerably reduced. A need, therefore, exists for an efficient system and method for monitoring and managing databases remotely.